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Google Maps has become an eyesore

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Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#331

Post by rr808 »

duped wrote: post #54
zbrozek wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and I prefer navigating with Apple maps after Google Maps stagnated for years and years. Apple's voice instructions are incomparably better.

The 3D view is a hilariously bad anti feature imo. Like the demo screenshot showing the Golden Gate Bridge and obscuring the actual road on the map is kind of funny. I also hate not being able to keep north fixed on the screen unless I'm in CarPlay. That just doesn't make sense.

Wow you get that in CarPlay? In Android Auto there is no North, I hate it.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#332

Post by Ycdr4thfdd »

l33tman wrote: post #288
nielsole wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps design is becoming less detailed over the years. It's really apparent when compared to OSM. It is necessary to search for a lot of things in Google maps as they are otherwise not visible. You can't really navigate off Google maps without turn-by-turn navigation. I wonder whether this is a strategic drive from Google to make maps more like search to enable advertising or whether they truly think this is th…

Yeah it's weird, very often a venue on a street is simply not visible unless zoomed in TO THE MAX. And then it's not any weird obscure thing, it's a restaurant or coffeeshop that's been there for years.

What's even worse is that often I'll click "restaurants", zoom in all the way, and then click "Search this area", yet Google will still refuse to show some popular restaurant, even when there are no other restaurants displayed in the window.

The only way to get those restaurants to show up is to search them by name.

Not sure if they're intentionally penalizing certain restaurants, but it's pretty bad.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#334

Post by Symbiote »

devnullbrain wrote: post #294
walthamstow wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really bad in London. Instead of telling you the road is called Oxford Street (quite a famous road!) it shows instead the road number, A40, which is not known by 95% of the local population, nor by 100% of visitors.

A population of 9 million but big tech's allergy to scaling customer support means they don't pay a local person to adjust things for local expectations. But why would they? We have to use it anyway.

They have a large office in London, so their own staff put up with it.

I once met a Googler who had previously worked on maps. I made a few grumbles (railway lines at the time were almost invisible, but very useful for orienting yourself when you exit a station, gardens were grey yet parks were green, "Transit" only shows the London Underground so it misses most of the local rail travel routes in South London, etc).

He agreed with everything, but said the staff working on Maps were all in California and wouldn't care, if they could even be made to understand the issues.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#335

Post by kzrdude »

Google Maps is fundamentally a commercial map layer. I use google maps to find commercial places - shops, restaurants and hotels! I use OsmAnd to follow forest paths and follow roads (to some extent - google maps has live traffic info, which is sometimes useful). OsmAnd can route you even if you are offline with only GPS signal.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#336

Post by stinos »

kilolima wrote: post #224

I've recently switched to Organic Maps as a replacement for gmaps. Navigation is offline, it uses OSM for its basemap and points of interest, and you can easily save points (and export them) without needing to login to an account. I also find it easier to use for planning routes for diving or hiking. The only problem is that it doesn't have that nifty terrain view from gmaps or a way to show an aerial satellite view.

OsmAnd is ok as well and offers more layer choices, but it's heavier. Organic Maps is great though to just quickly see where you are for instance. No fuzz, just a map, which is a feature these days, unfortunately.

Yet the thing which I don't really understand in the OP's article is statements like

Many times I just want to see the name of the street I’m standing on

followed by

But for now, I’m stuck with Google Maps

Of course I don't know whether they really think there are no other maps than Google and Apple, but that seems rather far fetched. This seems such a basic 'right tool for the job' thing. You have a computer in your hand, it's still supposed to work for you and not the other way around. And for a lot of things you can actually make it do that, so why wouldn't you?

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#337

Post by bowsamic »

LimeLimestone wrote: post #193

Is it just me or have you guys also noticed that the routes suggested by Google Maps have gotten worse? It seems that it only takes into account current traffic jams and not the ones which will occur 30mins into the trip. For instance, there's this spot in my city where I know there is a traffic jam at around 3:20 PM every day. I usually set off from home around 2:50 PM, which means I'll hit that congested area by 3:…

Even worse: here in Hamburg, a major German city with very high Google Maps usage, The S-Bahn line S1 is closed through the tunnel right in the centre of the city an entire month, and yet it has not been updated at all. Same thing occurred when the S1 from the airport to HBF was closed last month. These are very high capacity lines and it is tourist season. Anyone trying to use Google Maps is going to be very confused. Closures are only taken into account like 50% of the time.

Hamburg has almost half the population of Berlin, yet Google can't keep up with major scheduled line closures.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#338

Post by iamacyborg »

Knee_Pain wrote: post #328

The funniest thing to me is that Google Maps seems to be the "normal person" option and yet only OSM tells me where water fountains are. Millions of tourists worldwide use GMaps to navigate around in foreign places and yet they have no option to see where the closest place to refill their bottles is? Especially in the summer?

> Millions of tourists worldwide use GMaps to navigate around in foreign places and yet they have no option to see where the closest place to refill their bottles is? Especially in the summer?

It’s almost like this isn’t a thing folks are actually looking for.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#339

Post by bowsamic »

Another bad experience on Google Maps on iOS, that both my wife and I have experienced on two totally different iPhones: if you zoom in, half the time it will glitch out and jump somewhere else totally random on the map. Literally just the pinch zooming in functionality has been broken on iOS for a year or more.

Unfortunately, it is an amateur app made by amateur devs.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#340

Post by iinnPP »

Around 2 years ago while working on a geolocation project I researched a few alternative services to cover our reverse lookup needs (coordinates to address).

The difference in quality of data for the above mentioned process between MapQuest and Google, and then Google and OSM, was quite telling. Everyone who read the resulting report was also puzzled.

OSM was about 80% accurate, Google was about 90%, and MapQuest was over 98%. Also worth mentioning is that only two of these sources let you store the data (Mapquest and OSM). Someone else on my team wanted to use Canada Post's geolocation data. Do not. It is extremely bad.

We ended up running a service off MapQuest for advertising by mail using data from web traffic. The mailed letter or advertisement could be in the mailbox by the next day.

The UX over the same period has gotten noticeably worse. The embedded maps that use two fingers to move around the map is my favorite UX decision of all time...

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